Memory buffers (MBUFs) are well known in the software and hardware design of protocol stack processors. MBUFs according to the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) implementation include a control portion and a data portion. The MBUF allocated memory is of a fixed size relating to the memory available and communication data being processed. A typical choice for MBUF size is between 128 and 512 bytes.
BSD was designed with systems having significant power and memory resources in mind. In today's technology markets, wireless battery operated circuits are becoming ever more popular. With their popularity, increased resource efficiency becomes a critical limitation on performance.
It would be advantageous to provide an architecture for more efficient resource utilization that is backward compatible with current protocol implementations.